title: Weekly Dose of Optimism #178
author: Packy McCormick
content_type: article
publication: Not Boring by Packy McCormick
published: 2026-01-30T13:52:09
source_url: https://www.notboring.co/p/weekly-dose-of-optimism-178
word_count: 2799
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Weekly Dose of Optimism #178
Brief
Packy McCormick’s Weekly Dose of Optimism #178 highlights converging breakthroughs in AI, biotech, and longevity. Neuralink’s Telepathy now has 21 human implants with some users surpassing 10 bits/sec and ALS patients typing ~40 wpm; Blindsight and a next-gen 3x implant are forthcoming. Mariano Barbacid’s Spanish team cured KRAS-driven pancreatic tumors in mice using daraxonrasib + afatinib + SD36 with durable >200-day remissions in GEMMs and PDXs. DeepMind’s AlphaGenome decodes regulatory “dark matter” at million-base resolution (25/26 tasks), and Life Biosciences received FDA IND clearance for ER-100 (OSK reprogramming) in a Phase 1 glaucoma/NAION trial.
Why it matters
Neuralink’s Telepathy has implanted 21 people worldwide (as of Jan 2026); several participants exceeded 10 bits/sec thought-to-computer transfer and some ALS patients are typing ~40 words/min via imagined finger movements; Blindsight trials are pending and a 3x-capability implant is planned next year.
Key details
- Spanish team led by Mariano Barbacid eliminated KRAS-driven pancreatic tumors in mice using a triple combination — daraxonrasib (KRAS inhibitor) + afatinib (EGFR/HER2 inhibitor) + SD36 (STAT3 degrader) — producing complete regressions for >200 days across GEMMs and patient-derived xenografts with no significant toxicity reported.
- DeepMind published AlphaGenome (Nature) and open-sourced code: the model analyzes up to 1 million base pairs at single-nucleotide resolution, matched or outperformed prior tools on 25/26 variant-effect tasks, and has been used by ~3,000 researchers across 160 countries.
- The FDA cleared Life Biosciences’ IND for ER-100, the first human trial of partial epigenetic reprogramming (OSK: Oct4, Sox2, Klf4, excluding c‑Myc) for glaucoma/NAION (Phase 1), translating mouse/monkey vision-restoration results into a clinical study.